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Isidora shivered as the cold bit into her bones. The roads were covered in dirty slush and marked with a trail of destruction; blown out wheels and shards of broken glass that told of a fallen city. Yet its people still struggled, with groaning bellies and frozen bodies, they still waited for the day their nation would make its return to glory.
A fierce wind blew in from the east, almost strong enough to knock her glasses off of her face. Even under the coat Tataru had given her, Isidora could feel the chill clutching at every inch of her skin. Ishgard’s wintry peaks and frozen lakes were feeling more and more like a balmy La Noscean summer. The wind pushed her again, interrupting her pace as she walked along the thick painted lines in the middle of the road like an oblivious child. It was all she could do to take her mind off of Alphinaud and Alisaie in their shock collars. Her grandmother had died that way; seething with rage over the Garleans’ treatment of another’s children.
Isidora lost her balance in the midst of her musing, stumbling over an errant piece of debris. She yelped as she flung her arms out to stop her fall, then stilled as she felt another pair of hands at her waist.
“You should be more careful, darling. Rather treacherous conditions for a walk,” Thancred said. He was invisible, as before, but close enough that she could feel his breath at the tip of her ear.
She drew her arms back into herself, almost leaning into his touch. She didn’t dare speak. After the threat posed by Quintus earlier, Thancred’s words were not so easily forgotten.
“The other scouts are keeping watch at the station,” he said, sensing the tension in her stance. “’Twould seem the Garleans are quite content to let you mill about.”
She began walking again, glancing to the side every few ilms before speaking in as low a voice as she could. “I’m sure they’re content not to do battle with the Champion of Eorzea.” Even saying the title, she felt as much bitterness as she did pride.
Thancred’s hand slid across her back, settling just above her waist as she walked, seeming to guide her away from the road. The sky began to darken as they entered an alley flanked by charred buildings with broken windows. Before she knew it, the cold brick was against her back, and Isidora could feel Thancred’s gloved fingers gliding down her cheek.
“I won't ask if you’re hurt,” he began, so close now Isidora could feel his forehead against hers, “I know your heart yet lies in the station.”
“In part,” she said clenching a leather fist.
“The Citadel.”
“Bloody Imperials tear my family apart twice over and accuse me of rejecting unity.”
Thancred’s lips brushed over her her forehead as he spoke again. “We’ll get them out.”
It was only when he stopped stroking her face that she realized her jaw was clenched. She let out a tremulous breath, already feeling the hot sting of tears.
He tilted her chin upwards, wrenching her gaze from the frigid ground below to the evening sky above. “Listen to me. You’ve kept them safe this long. Continue as you have and they’ll be back at Camp Broken Glass before that Legatus can open his mouth again. You remember what I told you before?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
“Good. You should return to the station. Another half of a bell and they’ll be sending someone out to search for you.”
She shivered when he pulled away. Without thinking, she stuck her hand out, not knowing where or what to reach for, but trying all the same. “Wait. Would you,” she swallowed, hating that she couldn’t see him, “would you stay just...just a bit longer?”
It was barely a moment before he took her hand in his own. She could feel him drawing closer, pushing her back into the wall, and imagined a pale amber eye gazing upon her with burning intent.
His fingers ghosted above her waistband. “Not a sound.”
He had made the same request of her but a week prior, in an unused lecture hall at the Studium. Too long had it been since circumstances permitted him to lie entangled with her for hours, coaxing out his Skysinger’s song.
For now, she settled for his bare hand dipping beneath her smalls in the harsh Garlean winter.
Thancred kissed her as he began to rub the rough pad of his thumb over her clit. Try as she did to adhere to his instructions, a strangled moan was torn from her throat when he pushed a finger into her already dripping cunt.
He said nothing, responding only by taking her lower lip into his mouth to bite down.
“Careful,” he said, and ran his tongue over the faint impression of teeth.
Isidora wanted nothing less than care, would have tossed her coat to the side in a wanton display of lust if it meant he would pin her to the wall with her legs around his waist like she wanted.
She stifled her moans with a bitten tongue. He never went faster, only harder, a press of his palm against her clit, a pair of thick fingers that teased her open; anticipation buzzed in her very bones. For once, she had nothing to say of the cold.
She almost cried when he stopped.
“If I let you finish here, you have to be quiet.”
She nodded furiously, far past the point of caring about the metallic taste in her mouth. She was too close now to stop. There was a miserable heat that had pooled in the bottom of her belly, threatening the composure she had fought to maintain.
After a second that seemed to stretch into a bell, he resumed, plucking her strings as fervently as before. More so, perhaps, an urgency spurred on by his next words to her.
“I can hear them.”
For the life of her, she couldn’t understand what he meant, her thoughts a hurricane of “yes” and “please,” swirling so far round she was close to forgetting herself. It didn’t matter anymore that she couldn’t see him, only that she felt him, that his hands played her as beautifully as she did her lute.
But he kept whispering in her ear, a warning with each kiss. The Legatus was looking now, wondering where his prized prisoner had gone.
“What will he say if his soldier finds you in such a state? The Warrior of Light chasing her release with an unseen hand,” he said. Yet his movements, too, grew erratic, his voice quivering with the effort. His careful strokes had devolved into jagged pulls across her cunt, touching her too much and not enough all at once.
A witch on top of a murderer, they might say, seeing her writhe against singed brick with her arms behind her back. For this, the Eorzean witch had employed her magicks: crude and selfish purposes. And if they did catch him, her unseen lover, tricks undone in the wake of his own arousal?
“Then I will stain my blade once more.”
It was this final image, Thancred crossing the alley in an instant to strike at the first sign of intrusion, which brought Isidora to her peak. He smothered her cry with a rough kiss.
He withdrew his hand from her smalls. At any other time, he might have licked her slick off of his fingers, slowly, to entice her with his tongue darting back and forth over his hand. For now, she satisfied herself with the sound of his labored breaths.
“Here they come.”
Before she could respond, one of the Legion officer’s rounded the corner at the edge of the alley. He seemed afraid, holding his weapon before him as he drew closer. The one who had attempted to collar her, she realized.
“Commander wants to know why you’re lingering in the city,” he said. His voice trembled only a little.
Isidora watched him with wide eyes. She didn’t have the luxury of a proper recovery from her release, but if it made her seem stranger, more dangerous to this man who at once had only seen her as lesser for her birth, it was a sacrifice she could accept.
“I wanted to see if there was any more ceruleum to be found.” She winced at the hoarseness in her voice.
The soldier still held his gunblade towards her, though he seemed to be backing away now. “We have what we need. He wants eyes on you.”
Isidora closed her eyes, breathed in, and pushed off of the wall. The gunblade remained between her and her captor, but she reminded herself of the one at her back, the one who was always watching.
“Lead the way, then. I’ve gotten lost once already.” She wrapped her arms around herself, no longer having a distraction from the cold.
The soldier shook his head, then backed up again. “You’ll be up front.”
Frowning, she pushed past him. The Imperial directed her out of the city and back towards the station. Only as she began to descend the stairs did she feel a light pressure at her back. There and gone, in an instant.
A touch to remember through the night.